Numerous dispensing holders have been devised for self-adhering adhesive tape such as the well-known Scotch brand of tape, but most such holders are intended to rest on a desk top, diminishing the working space available there. Nevertheless, an adhesive tape dispenser is so nearly indispensable that it should always be readily accessible.
Basically, an adhesive tape dispenser comprises a rotatable support for a roll of tape and a cutter by which a length of tape that has been drawn off of the roll can be severed by jerking it downwards.
Because of the stickiness of the tape, considerable tension has to be exerted on it to unwind it from the roll. Prior light and inexpensive dispensing holders therefore required the use of two hands, one to hold the holder and the other to draw out and cut the tape. To facilitate single-handed dispensing, a holder must not only confine the tape to rotation but must itself offer strong resistance to forces that tend to move it. Prior singlehanded dispensing holders have therefore been made relatively heavy or have been provided with bottom suction cups. In either case such holders have had to be relatively large and expensive.
Loading tape into most prior tape dispensers has not presented any noteworthy inconvenience, but they have nevertheless left room for improvement in this respect, although it has not been obvious how such improvement might be attained.
Thus the art has not heretofore achieved a dispensing holder for adhesive tape that offers the utmost in convenience combined with extreme low cost, compactness and lightness.